MSU Board of Trustees roundup

At its meeting today, the Michigan State University Board of Trustees authorized the university to proceed with a project that will ultimately provide a new source of electricity for the campus through the use of a solar-power generating system.

The project calls for the installation of solar arrays on five campus parking lots. Eventually the solar arrays are expected to generate up to 10 megawatts of power for the campus.

In addition, the project will allow MSU to purchase power at a fixed price for the next 25 years. It has the potential to save the university up to $10 million in electrical costs.

The board also received the fall 2015 preliminary enrollment report, which showed MSU’s enrollment is expected to be around 50,650 students. That would be about a 1 percent increase over last year, which was 50,085.

This year’s entering class is expected to be about 7,965 students, slightly higher than last year’s. In addition, it’s expected that more than 24 percent of incoming students will be students of color.

Following are other actions taken by the board at its September meeting.

Several appointments were approved, including Aron Sousa as interim dean of the College of Human Medicine and William Donohue as faculty grievance official.

The board authorized the university to proceed with an upgrade of the campus electrical system on northwest campus.

The university was authorized to proceed with a project to construct a new high-voltage switch station, part of a larger project to continue to meet the power needs of the campus.